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Are Google’s 5 New Services Useful to Marketers?

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google-announcement-for-marktersYesterday Google announced 5 new services that not only shakes up the market a bit (iPhone, Bing, Yahoo, and others), but are another step in a series of bold moves by the search giant to remain the dominant player, and extend their tools to the mobile searcher. However, are these services useful to marketers in some way? I’m not so sure. What do you think?

Are Google’s 5 New Services Useful to Marketers?

Yesterday Google announced several new services:

  • Near Instant Voice Translation (still experimental)
  • Customized Suggest Based on Location
  • Product Search with Inventory for Nearby Retailers
  • Near Me now
  • Google Goggles

These you can read about the announcements here and here, but I will sum them up below.

Near Instant Voice Translation – Translation is offered via your mobile phone.  It is still  a bit experimental, but Google hopes to have the worlds major languages completed sometime in 2010.

Customized Suggest Based on Location – Start typing a search term on your mobile phone, it will suggest popular search terms based on your location.

Product Search with Inventory for Nearby Retailers – Self explanatory, learn about who has what in stock (with price) near you.

Near Me Now – For Android phones.  Search, get results for what is nearby, ranked by user ratings (think restaurants).

Google Goggles – Again for Android phones (I’m thinking about making the leap soon even though I recently went to a Blackberry), visual search.  More information in the video below.

If you can’t see the Google Goggle Video Here.

Ideas How Marketers Can Use These Features

While one I’m not super convinced there is a lot here for online marketers, I’m interested in your take.  Here are a few ideas:

  • Mobile Search:  Notice nearly all of these were tied to mobile search (marketing), be sure that your business has a solid strategy to collaborate with Google technology to serve results to mobile users.  Things like, having your products are in the Google Base products database.
  • Application Developers: If your company already has an iPhone app, consider porting it to Google’s phone of choice, the Android.  Google has a pattern of rewarding those who ‘get there’ first (the SEO side).
  • Click and Mortar Retailers: It’s important to have key things in place from which to build on.  Available Product data, and importantly an active community of Google users rating your products/service.

Chime In: Those just some ideas I have.  What say you? (Leave comments in the boxes below)

mobile marketing, Search Engine Marketing Strategy, web marketing strategy

About Travis Campbell

Husband. Dad. Marketing automator. Author. Educating and coaching others in their online business endeavors. Here's his Google profile.

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  • Paul

    How about using the voice translation service for product descriptions on a given website?

    • http://www.MarketingProfessor.com Travis Campbell

      Great idea, thanks for chiming in. I guess if the translation is deemed reliable, and there is an API to the voice translation this could be a great way to automate this function on a website, nice!

  • Ishtar

    Thanks for the post. Would you want to make sure your products are showing up properly when shown snapshots in Google goggles?

    • http://www.MarketingProfessor.com Travis Campbell

      Ishtar- Yes, it would be important that they understand what your products are (visually). I'm just doubtful that this would have a worthwhile ROI, but I could be wrong. Perhaps as adoption grows of Google powered phones, and mobile search becomes a more significant percentage of overall search revenue for Google (which it is trending toward), the investment would be more justifiable. It's like Twitter, don't abandon other things that you know have a decent ROI (PPC, SEO, etc.) for things that are uncertain. Make sense?

  • Paul

    How about using the voice translation service for product descriptions on a given website?

  • Ishtar

    Thanks for the post. Would you want to make sure your products are showing up properly when shown snapshots in Google goggles?

  • http://www.MarketingProfessor.com Travis Campbell

    Great idea, thanks for chiming in. I guess if the translation is deemed reliable, and there is an API to the voice translation this could be a great way to automate this function on a website, nice!

  • http://www.MarketingProfessor.com Travis Campbell

    Ishtar- Yes, it would be important that they understand what your products are (visually). I'm just doubtful that this would have a worthwhile ROI, but I could be wrong. Perhaps as adoption grows of Google powered phones, and mobile search becomes a more significant percentage of overall search revenue for Google (which it is trending toward), the investment would be more justifiable. It's like Twitter, don't abandon other things that you know have a decent ROI (PPC, SEO, etc.) for things that are uncertain. Make sense?

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